Patch 4.2: a Week’s Worth of Impressions

Patch 4.2: a Week’s Worth of Impressions

Released a week ago, Fire-themed patch 4.2 brought a lot of changes to the mix. There are new dailies, a new raid, new gear (including a legendary caster staff), class changes galore, and a variety of nerfs to tier 11 content.

Unleashing the Lightning

My favorite new addition so far has to be the new glyph of Unleashed Lightning. By allowing us to continue casting Lightning Bolt while moving, it keeps us from having to use lower-damage abilities while repositioning due to all those nasty surprises the ground has in store for us.

Fire Nova changes

Fire Nova now deals 15% more damage, which is welcome news, but the real selling point is that now it increases the duration of Flame Shock on targets affected by Nova by 6 seconds, which is great for packs of high health mobs. Switch to a new target when the Flame Shock is coming up, and cast away.

Firelands

As one might expect, there is plenty of fire in the newest raid dungeon. Aesthetically, this means you’d better get used to lots of yellow, orange and red (I think I stared at a light blue wall for 10 minutes after our first Firelands raid, just to cleanse my retinas).

The amount of trash mobs is positively obnoxious, which should at least allow you to quickly reach Friendly with the Avengers of Hyjal. You will fight charging Surgers, spinning turtles, flame vent spewing Molten Lords, angry scorpions and salamander packs, and that’s probably just in the first 10 minutes.

We tried Beth’tillac and Shannox on our 25 man raids on Tuesday and Wednesday, but as was the norm since ICC, not much progress was made until we went with a 10 man on Thursday and finally downed Shannox. Not that I can complain, since now I have my first Eternal Ember, with 24 to go on this early stage in the legendary staff quest.

The 31 Point Talent Trees

Last week, we were finally introduced to the new, streamlined, 31-point talent trees. Iconic talents will become available along with their specializations at level 10, when young characters get to answer the question “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”, which should give budding Elemental Shaman 75 levels worth of practice in the art of annoying their tanks and melee by Thunderstorming mobs out of their range. Not that I condone that or anything.

But what does that mean for those of us who will have an almost full allotment of talent points to play with when the new trees go live?

My first thought is this: I love mobility. It lets me survive better by moving away from areas of the floor that have a greater desire to broil, gril, poison, freeze, or otherwise harm me. I don’t trust the floor. That means both my Elemental and Restoration specs will have 7 points in Enhancement to pick up Ancestral Swiftness.
Elemental

Not much is new. Most of the talents are currently live talents, or knew about from recent previews. On that note…

I’m glad we’re retaining Totemic Wrath, as it really addresses the problems with Totem of Wrath right now, by scaling well with better gear, and allowing us to drop DPS Fire totems and buff the raid at the same time.

There are still many passive talents in the tree, but that may not be bad, in and of itself. One glance at your spell book will show just how much is going on there. I’m fine with there not being 15 more active abilities to keep track of.

Searing Flames is now out of reach for Elemental specs, so the debate between that and Lava Surge is over.

Restoration
Restoration offers some intriguing trade-off, with stronger tank healing from Nature’s Blessing, to improved survivability via either Nature’s Guardian or Ancestral Resolve.

Sadly, Restorative Totems is still a prerequisit for Mana Tide Totem. I will still spend those points, joylessly.

Focused Insight and Telluric Currents are probably the most interesting talents. Extra healing, and mana conservation, by dealing damage. I don’t know well they play out in a real raid environment, but they have the potential to add more variety to the play style, and I have to appreciate the apparent intent here.

Well, that’s all for now. Hopefully, my next posts will be more frequent.

Patch 3.3.2 Notes: A Little More Shamanism

The notes for patch 3.3.2 have been out for a couple of days now, and it seems some of the caster specs will receive a noticeable boost, Elemental Shaman amongst them.

 Shamanism: This talent now increases your Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning spell damage by 4/8/12/16/20% (Up from 3/6/9/12/15%) and Lava Burst spell damage by 5/10/15/20/25% (Up from 4/8/12/16/20%)

Although not a flat 5% damage increase, we still see improvements to the bulk of our rotation.

Also notable are the changes to the T10 4-piece set bonus, or, as I like to call it “the least loved set bonus since T7 saved us mana on car insurance, I mean, Lightning Bolt”

 Tier 10 Elemental Shaman set 4-pieces effect (redesigned): Whenever Lava burst successfully casted on the target, it increases Flame Shock duration by 6 sec

 In a way, it reminds me of 2-piece T9 bonus, but instead of a flat 9 second extension, what you get is largely determined by how close you can get to casting Lava Burst on cooldown. High movement fights will still wreak havoc with it, but it’s still going to save you some GCD’s and lead to fewer clipped Flame Shocks.

Hello world!

So it begins. I will try to use this space for ramblings, musings, and some occasional insight (likely pilfered from elsewhere) about the two classes I enjoy playing in WoW, Shaman and Paladin. Expect some random comments about being an Elemental Shaman in Icecrown Citadel, or the Tier 10 set bonuses at some point in the near future.